Newsforge: ZooLib’s Green has philosophical approach to Open Source

“Andrew Green was glad we began the interview via email because
it forced him to get started on the manual he needs to write for
ZooLib, a cross-platform application framework he released under
the MIT License last November.”

“A commercial developer for years, he was first faced with the
concept of Open Source when his friend John Gilmore urged him to
release the source to NetPhone, the groundbreaking Internet phone
service Green and his first wife, Denise Myers, developed and
introduced in 1994-95. But like many newcomers to Open Source, he
struggled to reconcile the reality that the only thing funding the
development of NetPhone was NetPhone sales which, clearly, would be
greatly reduced should they open the code. Though they chose not
to, the idea sparked further investigation, and like Green is wont
to do, some philosophical thinking.”

“Like any victim of wanderlust, Green is not daunted by
alternatives to convention. The walls around his desk are filled
with photographs and inspirational or thought-provoking quotes from
various sources. He sends me a copy of his favorite one, which he
found in the diary of a youth hostel he stayed in when he was 19
while spending the year in Australia. It is a classic call to
courage and awareness in the face of uncertainty and adventure.
‘Relish the unusual and question the normal,” it says to those
‘running on the front line … with a shadow of a dream to guide
you…’ It’s hokey only if the reader doesn’t actually live that
way. But with Green, I find myself adding a name to the list of
countries he has visited every time he tells a new story. Finally I
interrupt him (he is, as he puts it, “very chatty”) and ask him
what countries he hasn’t been to.”

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